ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A senior official from the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria (Rojava) said on Thursday that an initiative aimed at preventing renewed conflict has been conveyed to Damascus through international mediators, but has so far received no response.
“We presented an initiative to prevent war, but the Syrian government has not responded,” Elham Ahmed, a senior official of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), told Rudaw, adding that the proposal was delivered “through international powers.”
Last week, thousands of Syrian army troops and allied jihadist factions launched a large-scale assault on the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsood in northern Aleppo, areas that had been secured for nearly 15 years by the Asayish security forces.
The violence killed at least 82 people, including 43 civilians, according to a Sunday report by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Fighting also displaced approximately 150,000 people, the Erbil-based Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF) told Rudaw a day earlier.
Shortly after a ceasefire took effect in Aleppo’s Kurdish neighborhoods on Sunday, the Syrian army’s Operations Command on Tuesday declared additional Kurdish-held areas—Deir Hafer, Maskanah, and surrounding districts in eastern Aleppo—as “closed military zones.”
These areas, controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have in recent months been flashpoints for Damascus-aligned factions, which view their capture as a means to open a logistical corridor linking Aleppo to Raqqa province and to increase military pressure on the SDF along the Euphrates River.
Control of eastern Aleppo would be strategically significant, allowing Damascus and its allies to establish a supply route between Aleppo and Raqqa in north-central Syria while intensifying pressure on SDF positions along the river.
Ahmed said the Syrian government “has closed the door to all initiatives for a solution,” emphasizing that DAANES seeks to “guarantee the security of our region, the lives of our people, and the rights of our community.”
“There has been no communication between us and the Syrian government since the attack on Aleppo,” she added.